Anyone else going mad trying to buy a house in London?

[jumpjumpjumparound]

Apologies in advance I just want to have a rant!

Is anyone else having an absolute nightmare trying to buy a house in London? The market is crazy here and every other buyer is a cash buyer making it near impossible to secure anything.

First house we had secured and then buyer pulled out as we were coming up to exchange and sold to a cash buyer instead leaving us heartbroken and out of pocket on survey and search fees.

Next house that we really liked we saw before it was even on the market then before we got back for our second viewing it had been snapped up by a cash buyer.

Current house that we like we can't afford the asking price only just below and now a cash buyer has turned up on the scene probably going to buy it and he isn't even going to live there just rent it out straight away.

What makes it worse is a severe lack of houses coming on to the market so lack of supply seems to be driving up the prices.

Its so frustrating any one else in the same boat?

Whereabouts are you looking? Might be worth widening the search area.

I'm also going mad.

Been looking for over a year now.

Very poor housing stock -everything we're looking at needs extensive modernisation in our price bracket. Astronomically inflated asking prices given historical completion prices on the Land Registry, but then someone comes along and pays the crazy price anyway.

We're renting a house I love and had hoped to buy; now our LL says he's been told it's been valued 30% higher than he thought, and we can't afford the new asking price.

I'm now looking all over West London and hoping for a big bad crash after the Olympics.

Can you widen your search, Essex maybe?

Which bits of London are you looking in?

We've had a tough time of it, although we've now been accepted on somewhere (see how that goes eh?) I am on maternity leave and half of my NCT group are looking to move from flats to houses, with little success.

I have never felt the generation gap between Londoners of our parents age and young(ish) people now more strongly than I have during the house search. It really is very hardgoing, and easy to feel you'll be funding another generation's handsome retirement ;)

PS we've looked in north London

wembley is still comparatively cheap - not ALL London is v.expensive, but I personally wouldn't live in Wembley. I think Ruislip is also ok and not 'rough'.

easy to feel you'll be funding another generation's handsome retirement

You are unfortunately. Because your parents age saw the benefits of silly house price inflation, they made the money from it and now it's unaffordable for the next gen. Similarly you will not end up with your parents' pensions.

to be fair older generation would benefit if they sell up and move out of London, not if they want to stay in similar area (unless downsizing a lot).

another affordable one is Acton (some parts of it) - quite good tune connection to central Lon.

It certainly not easy these days RCheshire. I never thought the sums would be quite so heady to get a three bed terraced house.

The people I feel really sorry for though are the many young people who have a snowball's chance in hell of buying anything at all....especially with rents as what they are

Yup, we're really struggling (NE London). We've got a place under offer now but, honestly, it's a shithole, needs so much work, but there's so little on the market...

ours is like that too ecuse. It is gutting that people who are so lax they can live with large holes in ceiling/leaks fixed with gaffa tape will get so much money for their property, simply because someone in their family casually signed a mortgage application form 25 years ago. I daresay I will bump into you in one of the B&Qs in North London, looking mildly harassed. I'll be the one with polyfilla in her hair :)

crazyhead, it's one of the reasons I believe house prices will fall significantly over the next decade. How is the generation in their teens going to buy houses at current prices when they leave uni with £30-40k of debt, wages are pretty much stagnant (if they get a decent job anyway) and they need 50k for a deposit.

Some will get help from parents of course, but fundamentally the market can't cope with the bottom rung entirely missing from the housing ladder - it stops everyone above moving.

I know what you mean RCheshire. I think places just have to slide a bit, really.

In the nicer bits of London, though, I wonder whether people will rent their houses rather than sell unless rental laws change, perhaps remortgaging in order to move.

One of the places we offered on below the very high asking, that's what the vendors did. They wouldn't even accept a 5% reduction on asking after 2 years on the market because they knew they could rent the place out. Of course, you might well argue that university leavers will still need to find the rent money... but the possibility of holding onto property in a place where there aren't enough places to live puts vendors in a scarily powerful position.

I think in most places, people won't be able to do that and I think you are right that it has to fall. London does sometimes feel like another country, but maybe it'll tumble too - I just don't know anymore.

Our compromise has been to only buy somewhere at a rate we know to be roughly comparable to the past few years and not higher. And then get in and overpay the mortgage while rates are low.

but then wouldn't the teenage generation be the main inheritors of all these overpriced properties?

This situation is not going to last forever. The question is, how long can you and your family wait it out?

The most enormous baby boom took place immediately after the war. Around 2020, these babyboomers will be in their seventh or eighth decade, and the great majority of them will become either too frail or too poor to remain in their homes any longer. We know this for a fact, because this is the first generation to by minutely monitored by the NHS and HMRC.

By and large, the baby boomer family homes are big, multiple-bedroom family homes. You'll foresee that these family homes will all come onto the market in one big rush; simple demographics make it almost inevitable.

I foresee a total collapse of the housing market about ten years from now.

Unfortunately, those of us whose family circumstances demand additional bedrooms and gardens now do not have ten years to wait for the market to reach its natural demographic conclusion.

Apologies for crap English, commuter stress in pre-Olympics, sorry

The oldest baby boomers are 67 just now. Their life expectancy is another 15-18 years, therefore the start of the baby boomers dying out isn't even going to begin for another generation. In 30 years things will be different, not 10.

You're conflating "selling" with "dying".

I think, even then, it depends on the population size and whether there has been much house building. Yes, some younger people might get their hands on some nice houses, but who will they be? By then, people who have inherited a lot of money perhaps. Unless there is more stock, it is hard to see a field day for younger buyers, necessarily.

In the meantime, advertised rents for houses where I am buying are around £700 a week. I'd rather take my chances on a big mortgage, and just make overpayments. I think waiting could be horribly stressful.

I may be proved very wrong....

In the space of a year between 2008 and early 2009, prices in London fell by 15-20% according to the Land Registry. And the only reason prices have risen again in London is a combination of low interest rates, Q.E. providing city bonuses, a devalued pound, lender forebearance, foreign investors (seeing London as a 'safe haven') and of course the 'olympic effect'. Do any of these strike anyone as being sustainable long-term?

What concerns me are those families stretching themselves to the limit to get on the ladder with little forethought given to the effects of any of the circumstances above changing. I don't know about anyone else but from what I hear, London has a very 2006/07 feel about it at the moment and who then thought prices would fall?

The Office of National Statistics (Orwellian name or what) tends to use median age averages, which is frustrating as a modal average in this case would provide greater guidance. I could map out of the graph, but it would feel too much like my day job .

I've totally excluded interest rate rises, taxation, new building etc as they can't be reasonably predicted. They're the 'unknown unkowns'.

People on fixed incomes in large houses are going to have to sell. The cost of fuel bills (and, controversially, healthcare) will see to it.

There are complications I could go into about geographical distribution and immigration or so on, but I don't have long term faith in property as an asset class at all.

FWIW, I'm looking to buy as well. Life marches on whatever the market is doing!

Exactly. Life marches on. I'm looking to buy. But I full expect the house I buy to be worth less in 5 years time. Luck of the draw - born at a time that means I'm screwed for house prices - a hell of a lot better than being born at a time doing 7 days a week down a pit, or conscripted for a world war!

My attitude too. We are the richest generation in history, and still we aren't grateful